1 . Reunions offer a chance to reflect on how much has changed. One happened in Hollywood when Here premiered (首映), bringing together the actors, director and writer behind Forrest Gump 40 years later for a new film. The stars were “de-aged” using new AI tools, making them more youthful in some scenes and enabling the filmmakers to see the transformation in real time while shooting.
With the use of generative AI in film making come things worth watching. The first is how AI will be used to tell new types of stories, as storytelling becomes more personalised and interactive. No one is quite sure how the nature of storytelling will change, but it is sure to. David Thomson, a film historian, compares generative AI to the advent of sound. When movies were no longer silent, it changed the way plot points were made and how deeply viewers could connect with characters. Cristóbal Valenzuela, who runs a company providing AI-enhanced software, says AI is like a “new kind of camera”, offering a fresh “opportunity to reimagine what stories are like”. Both are right.
Another big development to watch is how AI will be used as a time-saving tool. Generative AI will automate and simplify complex tasks like film-editing and special effects. For a glimpse of the future, watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2023. It featured a scene that used a “rotoscoping” tool to edit out the green-screen background and make a talking rock more believable. It shortened into hours what might have otherwise taken days of video-editing.
What is also noticeable is more dramatic conflicts between creators and those running AI platforms. This year is likely to bring floods of lawsuits (诉讼) from authors, musicians and actors about how their works have been used to train AI systems without permission or payment. Perhaps they can agree on some sort of licensing arrangement, in which AI companies start paying copyright-holders.
It will probably be a few years before a full-length film is produced entirely by AI, but it is just a matter of time.
1. What can we learn about the film Here?| A．It relates a story about youth. | B．The theme of the film is reunion. |
| C．AI tools are employed in the film. | D．It is adapted from Forrest Gump. |
| A．Transformative. | B．Destructive. | C．Representative. | D．Irreplaceable. |
| A．To show the high efficiency of AI tools. | B．To demonstrate the influence of the film. |
| C．To analyse a novel way of video-editing. | D．To praise the hard work behind the scenes. |
| A．Conflicts between man and machine. | B．AI’s huge effects on film production. |
| C．Drawbacks of dependence on AI tools. | D．Hot debate on the use of technology. |
2 . Canada is diverse and vast, and the festivals celebrated there reflect this. Here are some exciting ones that attract visitors worldwide.
Vancouver Celebration of Light
The largest fireworks competition in the world is held every summer in Vancouver. It consists of concerts, food stalls, and the Seawall Challenge, a popular urban adventure race. The festival, which lasts about a week, makes for a great way to get to know the city from a local standpoint.
Edmonton Folk Festival
From its humble beginning in 1980, Edmonton Folk Festival has grown to be one of the world’s famous folk festivals. Held each August, the lineup of the 10-day-long festival is always outstanding and ticket prices stay reasonable. Edmonton is also a gateway to Jasper and the Canadian Rockies, about two hours away in case you have extra time to explore after the festival.
Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is one of the leading film festivals in the world, ranking closely with Cannes and Sundance. Films such as Hotel Rwanda, American Beauty, and The Big Chill made their premieres (首映) at this famous star-filled event held each September. The 11-day-long festival is also known as the kick-off of awards season, with many films that make their first public performance at TIFF going on to get nominated for Oscars and Golden Globe awards.
Montreal Comedy Festival
Since 1983, Montreal Comedy Festival, or, Just for Laughs as it is more commonly known, has been inviting people to get together just for fun, just for entertainment-just for laughs. The festival, which takes place every year for two weeks in July, has grown in popularity and reputation and today features some of the world’s greatest comedians and it also resulted in a television show that is broadcast internationally.
1. What do Vancouver Celebration of Light and Edmonton Folk Festival have in common?| A．They feature fireworks. | B．They require admission tickets. |
| C．They consist of concerts | D．They are held annually. |
| A．Edmonton Folk Festival. | B．Montreal Comedy Festival. |
| C．Vancouver Celebration of Light. | D．Toronto International Film Festival. |
| A．Vancouver. | B．Edmonton. | C．Toronto. | D．Montreal. |
3 . Even when you have confidence in yourself, your goals will sometimes seem out of reach. When that happens, get hold of the people who
When I was younger, I
Early in my
Even now, I
| A．refer to | B．depend on | C．learn from | D．believe in |
| A．quit | B．struggled | C．regretted | D．argued |
| A．responsibilities | B．dreams | C．opportunities | D．doubts |
| A．stopped | B．admitted | C．allowed | D．considered |
| A．tracked | B．recommended | C．accompanied | D．encouraged |
| A．serious | B．possible | C．hard | D．necessary |
| A．request | B．unwillingness | C．inability | D．attempt |
| A．difficulties | B．options | C．aims | D．standards |
| A．career | B．experiment | C．business | D．recovery |
| A．foolishly | B．simply | C．wisely | D．bravely |
| A．original | B．familiar | C．typical | D．positive |
| A．looking into | B．taking down | C．dealing with | D．pointing out |
| A．introduce | B．remind | C．guarantee | D．warn |
| A．experience | B．describe | C．compare | D．limit |
| A．probably | B．fortunately | C．obviously | D．importantly |
A 50-minute drive northwest of downtown, Beijing, a village pops up. It
Shadow puppetry is seen
“
5 . If having to make a choice between reading an e-book and a printed book, which would most people choose? Some would go for an e-book while some still prefer the hard-printed book.
Undoubtedly, e-books do have benefits. Firstly, changes to an electronic publication are relatively easy to make. They are quicker to obtain. E-books are more easily updated. The printed books on many subjects can become outdated very quickly. Secondly, e-books can be easily and quickly kept up to date. You usually get far more than just the e-books. Most e-books are sold with bonuses and related information that usually do not come with the purchase of a printed book. Moreover, they take up less space. Instead of a big library, you can fit literally thousands of books on your computer. It also makes it easier to share this information with families and friends.
For nearly twenty years, additionally, futurists have been predicting the development of printed books. The conventional view has been that digital e-books are on the verge of replacing paper books. However, this has not been the case. A printed book has its advantages too. Firstly, it is an object that can be carried and used alone. It needs no electric outlet (插座), no batteries, nothing. Secondly, e-books will always require some forms of support that the printed book does not need.
I believe that the online publishing has not taken off because people want real books. What is being published online more and more are pamphlets (小册子) and things that really do not need to be in print. These are stuff that people throw away afterward. More often, people do not want to read a book on the computer. What could be better than a paper book? It lasts a long time. These books are designed to last a long time without disappearing.
To sum up, there is no denying that the printed book is still very much preferred over its digital cousins. Reading electronic publications is just not the same when it comes to books. People are still very interested in real books and notebooks.
1. What can we know about an e-book?| A．It will never be out of date. | B．It always gives you an added bonus. |
| C．It can deliver information quickly. | D．It has taken the place of printed books. |
| A．Printed books will disappear. | B．Printed books can be used alone. |
| C．E-books have many restrictions. | D．E-books have no drawbacks. |
| A．The low demand for book industry. | B．The expectations from people. |
| C．The guidance of policy. | D．The desire for the printed books. |
| A．Hopeless. | B．Unpredictable. | C．Costly. | D．Promising. |
6 . Years earlier, I’d been a trainee in a lab, which stuck to a traditional format. The lab head would spend much time asking the presenter a series of pointed questions. Presenters would need to know extremely small details about articles they were citing and present their research using picture-perfect analyses and graphs. So the presentation was an untoward thing to almost anyone.
When I started my own lab, I decided to change the routine by being friendly and welcoming while asking my trainees challenging questions about their science. But for 6 years, I felt I hadn’t created the lab environment I wanted.
The turning point came during the pandemic. It hit home to me that one’s life isn’t endless and that I need to make the most of the time I have. I decided that I wanted to become a better professor—to make a mark by training the next generation of scientists.
In my personal life, I had benefited from listening to talks by motivational speakers. So I decided to start there. At the next lab meeting, I showed my students a video about happiness, hoping it would help them in their personal life and give us something light to discuss. I wasn’t sure how they’d respond, hut I was pleased to discover that they were interested in discussing the advice in the video afterward. In the end, I asked them whether they’d like to do similar activities in future meetings, and they said yes.
From then on, I began every lab meeting with a 20-minute team building session. My lab members and I do many activities—including analyzing and appreciating poetry. These sessions have eased tensions and opened minds, helping foster more participation later in the meeting.
So far, I have been hopeful about the lab environment we’re creating. My greatest wish is to see my trainees become their best selves, understand who they are and what they want as well as reach their career goals. I am proud of the change and the difference I’ve made.
1. What does the underlined word “untoward” in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Harmonious. | B．Embarrassing. | C．Stressful. | D．Appealing. |
| A．He no longer wasted his time. | B．He decided to become a professor. |
| C．He realized the benefit of inspiring talks. | D．He wanted to make more contributions. |
| A．The change the author made. | B．A video the students liked. |
| C．The benefit the author got from others. | D．A proposal the students put forward. |
| A．Team building sessions can bring unexpected benefits. |
| B．One should have the courage to make a change. |
| C．Professors are responsible for teamwork. |
| D．Motivational talks are the origin of inspiration. |
7 . Conflict (冲突) between teenagers and parents happens for a lot of reasons. Sometimes conflict happens between teenagers and parents just because conflict happens between human beings anyway. Humans have different needs, different feelings, different opinions about what they want, and the relationship with people can be really difficult. However, teenagers can cause further conflict because of the hormonal (生理的) changes that are happening and the stage of life that they're in.
Teenagers and parents have different understanding about rules and at times they find it difficult to look into the future. So parents and teenagers will often experience conflict about many things, do chores, homework, whether teenagers speak respectfully or not and about what they're allowed to do.
Before we think about rule boundaries (界线) for teenagers, we need to make sure that we have a really good relationship base. There's no point saying “From now on, you have to listen to me”: if you don't have a positive relationship with your teenager. We need to go back and make sure there is some degree of shared respect, and some degree of positive communication and enjoyment being together. you do that first, it means that rule boundaries are a lot easier to set up.
Often we're dealing with conflict on the fly. This is not the right time to be dealing with it. We really want parents and teenagers to sit down and think about the kinds of things that may happen in the house before the problems come. The more detailed your rule boundaries are for teenagers, the more likely it is that they are going to follow them. So this means we don't have rule boundaries like “Have the bathroom cleaned”. It needs to be “The floors mopped, nothing on the countertop and the mirrors cleaned by ten o'clock every Saturday”: Rule boundaries need to be written down, and set out ahead of time so the teenager knows exactly what's expected.
1. What's important to set up a rule boundary easily for teenagers?| A．Being strict from the start. | B．Developing a good relationship with them first. |
| C．Saying"No" to their requirements. | D．Avoiding close talks with them. |
| A．Doing some housework. | B．Having a good reading habit. |
| C．Cleaning the bathroom. | D．Finishing your homework by five. |
| A．In a hurry. | B．On the plane. | C．By oneself. | D．Another day. |
| A．Growing Pains | B．Teenage Problems |
| C．Parent-Child Conflict and Solutions | D．Knowing the Conflict |
8 . A cancer treatment no longer means what it used to be. Just a few decades ago, the survival rate beyond five years was less than 50%. Now, nearly 70% of those who get cancer survive that long, and that rate is set to rise. Why? Because, more than ever, chemotherapy (化疗) and radiation, once the only ways of cancer treatment, are being paired with or replaced by varieties of new drugs and treatments.
For example, the first medication for what was previously considered an “undruggable” lung cancer was recently approved in the United States, Canada, Europe and the U.K. And a brand-new precise chemotherapy drug delivered directly to breast cancer cells is giving hope to patients with the HER 2-positive form of the disease.
Another discovery has been the promise of a treatment called immunotherapy, as researchers around the world have discovered ways to use the body’s own immune (免疫) system to battle cancer cells.
Also driving hope is a focus on prevention. Decades of research and public education have led to greater awareness of how lifestyle changes can reduce our risk of developing cancer. According to an article from the journal Pharmaceutical Research and published by the National Institutes of Health, 90% to 95% of cancers can be owed to environment and lifestyle, rather than to genetic (基因的) factors.
Employing vaccines (疫苗) is another effective way of prevention. Take the mRNA cancer vaccines for example. The speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines was thanks to foundations already laid by researchers who had been working for years to create mRNA vaccines to fight cancer. These vaccines use a specially programmed molecule (分子) to activate an immune response in the body’s cells. Unlike the COVID-19 vaccines designed to help protect billions of people, each cancer mRNA vaccine is tailored to treat a single patient’s cancer.
In fact, this personalized approach can be made for everyone, and for every cancer.
1. Why is the survival rate beyond five years rising now?| A．Because new drugs and treatments have come out. |
| B．Because chemotherapy and radiation get advanced. |
| C．Because new drugs have been paired with old ones. |
| D．Because new treatments have replaced the old ones. |
| A．All the cancers are not related to genetic factors. |
| B．Most cancers have no relationship with lifestyle. |
| C．A focus on prevention is our only hope to deal with cancer. |
| D．All cancers have relationship with environment and lifestyle. |
| A．The COVID-19 vaccines can be used to fight some cancers. |
| B．One cancer mRNA vaccine can’t be used for another cancer. |
| C．One cancer mRNA vaccine can be used to treat patients of the same cancer. |
| D．The COVID-19 vaccines were created from previous cancer mRNA vaccines. |
| A．A diary entry. | B．A news report. |
| C．A book review. | D．A science fiction. |
9 . Choose Your One-Day-Tours!
Tour A - Bath &Stonehenge including entrance fees to the ancient Roman bathrooms and Stonehenge -￡37 until 26 March and ￡39 thereafter. Visit the city with over 2,000 years of history and Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent and the Costume Museum, Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments dating back over 5,000 years.
Tour B - Oxford & Stratford including entrance fees to the University St Mary’s Church Tower and Anne Hathaway’s -￡32 until 12 March and ￡36 thereafter. Oxford: Includes a guided tour of England’s oldest university city and colleges. Look over the “city of dreaming spires(尖顶）” from St Mary‘s Church Tower. Stratford: Includes a guided tour exploring much of the Shakespeare wonder.
Tour C - Windsor Castle &Hampton Court: including entrance fees to Hampton Court Palace -￡34 until 11 March and ￡37 thereafter. Includes a guided tour of Windsor and Hampton Court, Henry VILL’s favorite palace. Free time to visit Windsor Castle(entrance fees not included).With 500 years of history, Hampton Court was once the home of four Kings and one Queen. Now this former royal palace is open to the public as a major tourist attraction. Visit the palace and its various historic gardens, which include the famous maze(迷宫) where it is easy to get lost!
Tour D –Cambridge including entrance fees to the Tower of Saint Mary the Great -￡33 until 18 March and ￡37 thereafter. Includes a guided tour of Cambridge, the famous university town, and the gardens of the 18th century.
1. Which tour will you choose if you want to see England’s oldest university city?| A．Tour A | B．Tour B |
| C．Tour C | D．Tour D |
| A．Windsor Castle & Hampton Court | B．Oxford & Stratford |
| C．Bath & Stonehenge | D．Cambridge |
| A．It used to be the home of royal families | B．It used to be a well-known maze |
| C．It is the oldest palace in Britain | D．It is a world-famous castle |
10 . If you look at the dynamic “Global Temperatures” map on NASA’s website, you can see the historic temperature change over time across the planet as the timeline goes from 1880 to the modern day. By 2019, the entire planet is in red, orange, and yellow colors, indicating temperatures much higher than the historical average in every country and human inhabitance.
If the timeline went to 2023, the map would look even worse. That’s because the summer of 2023 was the hottest ever, according to ocean monitors. July was the hottest month in recorded history. Next July could be worse. Unless we do something quickly, we face dealing with more and more dangerous and expensive natural disasters in the future.
Forest fires sent smoke from Canada across the North American continent, causing New York City to have the worst air quality in its recorded history. Heavy rainstorms fell on Vermont and the Northeastern United States in just a couple of days in the middle of July, which exceeded the amount that area would usually receive in two months and caused extreme damage to homes and businesses. Around the same time, flash flooding in Bucks County, Pennsylvania — north of Philadelphia — killed nearly a dozen people.
Erich Fischer, a researcher specializing in climate studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, is concerned that natural disasters could get much worse in the future—and in ways we cannot predict. He called for a “strike for climate justice,” which actually took place on Sept. 15, 2023. “The strategy needs to be twofold (双重的) . We need to decrease carbon emissions as much as realistically possible. That is already happening with people using electric cars and other green technologies. At the same time, we also need to find ways to predict the risk of natural disasters ahead of time,” said Erich Fischer.
1. Why does the writer mention the data on NASA’s website in paragraph 1?| A．To explain a concept. | B．To introduce a topic. |
| C．To provide a solution. | D．To make a prediction. |
| A．The severity of natural disasters. | B．The worst air quality in New York City. |
| C．The extreme damage by flash flooding. | D．The cause of the forests fires in Canada. |
| A．He advocated a twofold strategy. |
| B．He suggested forbidding carbon emissions. |
| C．He required people to use more electric cars. |
| D．He emphasized the awareness of climate changes. |
| A．The Hottest Month in History | B．Natural Disasters in the World |
| C．Extreme Weather Could Get Worse | D．Green Technology Would be Needed |
